Rich- Dude you and I are like oil and water and I find it hilarious!
Performance doesn't consitute muscianship, for example: a composer who can only play the piano marginally well but has a talent for arrangement and voicings...so he has an orchestra perform the work.
...but he would be severly handicapped, if not precluded, from doing so if he could not play at all. Almost always, one had has to play something, even if at only a marginal level, to compose. The exception would be those individuals so gifted that they can compose and play entirely in their mind, but I'm sure you'll agree those aren't the individuals we are discussing...
Another point that I'm trying to make is that just because things are arranged differently, it doesn't matter if you're rearranging a "Am/C/G/Em" chord progression or some Van Halen riff on a sample.
I contend it most certainly DOES matter - from all standpoints, legal, moral & ethical. Serious question - can music be plaigerised? If so, what constitutes such plaigerism? I (and the courts) contend that it CAN be stolen...
For 99.999% of musicians, it has all been done before.
Your midterm paper on Hemingway has been done before - thats no excuse to pass off someone else's work as your own....
Of course you get those CRAZY performers like Armstrong or Jimi that revolutionize how people perceive musical theory and composition. But for the vast majority of musicians, they are reinventing the wheel.
As a classical guitar player, I would expect you to know that the "reinventing the wheel" stage had to be passed through by the creative geniuses you list before they could transend the current state of the art. Imagine how much poorer the world woud be if Eddie or Jimi just pasted together tapes of other bands and "rapped" doggeral verse over them, instend of working up to, and through, the "reinventing the wheel" stage. Not to mention that you sell the enire process far too short: think anyone else ever used the chords G - D -C, G- D- Am, before Bob Dylan "reinvented the wheel" and wrote "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"?
Just because they reinvent the wheel on instruments and perform on them doesn't make their art any more valid.
Yes, it does. As someone who can play an instrument, it should right roundly P-*-*-* you off that some one can steal, (frequently without authorization) someone else's real music, slap some bathroom wall poetry over it, and call it "music". They are no more "musicians" than the fellow who loads the cds into the jukebox.
Look at Johnny Cash, one of my favorite artists, he even rips guitar riffs and vocal melodies off of HIMSELF. Does that make him a non-musician?
No it means he can only sing comfortably in a handful of keys, and that his playing style tends to emphasize certain keys out of that range. If his whole career was based on "sampling" James Brown and Sony and Cher, and bragging about getting shot over the samples, then yes, that WOULD make him less of a musician.
Even though I've spent years studying the guitar style that is IMHO the most difficult, classical, I still don't understand why people think difficulty validates someone as an artist.
...maybe because if its easy, and everyone or almost everyone can perform it, it won't receive respect. Just like sports - I notice "hopscotch" and "bowling" aren't olympic events....
I think that notion is somewhat juvenile, just as juvenile as a mall goth thinking he is really sticking it to the man by being fat, pissed off, and wearing black near the arcade
For an example of this, see the Yngwie, who is an incredibly guitarist from a technical standpoint...but who the hell cares? I'd rather listen to Cash play "G/C/D" and sing about life.
As a guitarist myself, I appreciate both. Guitar gymnasts like Yngwie, Micheal Angelo, Vai, Satriani, Van Halen expand minds and push the boundaries of whats considered "possible" on the instrument. A blistering speed lick is just as valid an expression of emotion as "Folsom Prison Blues" - its another tool in the toolbox. But i would rather listen to ANYONE playing an instrument with a living, breathing rhytm section than any canned, sampled rap dreck. (Besides, that "mall goth" kid just MIGHT be inspired by the Man in Black....)
Anyway, if you get the chance, go to
http://www.fortminor.com with your speakers on and tell me that the voicings/beats of the first song that plays, "Remember the Name" are not excellent. All of this was arranged by one guy, who also performs, who also played all of the instruments on the album.
I'm firewalled from this site while at work - if he played the instruments, then HE isn't the kind of cat I'm complaining about.